“Therefore, I suggest that I sit in the dome on one end of a telephone hookup with Tom, who will sit in the ship, his hand over the firing button, ready to blast off for Earth the moment he gets the order from me. Monroe will take the single-seater down to the Riphad Mountains, landing as close to the other dome as he thinks safe. He will then proceed the rest of the way on foot, doing the best scouting job he can in a spacesuit.
“He will not use his radio, except for agreed-upon nonsense syllables to designate landing the single-seater, coming upon the dome by foot, and warning me to tell Tom to take off. If he’s captured, remembering that the first purpose of a scout is acquiring and transmitting knowledge of the enemy, he will snap his suit radio on full volume and pass on as much data as time and the enemy’s reflexes permit. How does that sound to you?”
They both nodded. As far as they were concerned, the command decision had been made. But I was sitting under two inches of sweat.
“One question,” Tom said. “Why did you pick Monroe for the scout?”
“I was afraid you’d ask that,” I told him. “We’re three extremely unathletic Ph.D’s who have been in the Army since we finished our schooling. There isn’t too much choice. But I remembered that Monroe is half Indian—Arapahoe, isn’t it, Monroe?—and I’m hoping blood will tell.”
“Only trouble, Colonel,” Monroe said slowly as he rose, “is that I’m one-fourth Indian and even that… Didn’t I ever tell you that my great-grandfather was the only Arapahoe scout who was with Custer at the Little Big Horn? He’d been positive Sitting Bull was miles away. However, I’ll do my best. And if I heroically don’t come back, would you please persuade the Security Officer of our section to clear my name for use in the history books? Under the circumstances, I think it’s the least he could do.”
I promised to do my best, of course.
After he took off, I sat in the dome over the telephone connection to Tom and hated myself for picking Monroe to do the job. But I’d have hated myself just as much for picking Tom. And if anything happened and I had to tell Tom to blast off, I’d probably be sitting here in the dome all by myself after that, waiting …
“Broz negglel” came over the radio in Monroe’s resonant voice. He had landed the single-seater.
I didn’t dare use the telephone to chat with Tom in the ship, for fear I might miss an important word or phrase from our scout. So I sat and sat and strained my ears. After a while, I heard “Mishgashul” which told me that Monroe was in the neighborhood of the other dome and was creeping toward it under cover of whatever boulders were around.